Knowledge of God and the development of early Kabbalah / by Jonathan Dauber.

• Author: Dauber, Jonathan.
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Language: English
• Series: Supplements to The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 18.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (285 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

In Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah , Jonathan Dauber offers a fresh consideration of the emergence and early development of Kabbalah against the backdrop of a re-evaluation of the relationship between early Kabbalistic and philosophic discourse. He argues that the first Kabbalists adopted a philosophic ethos that was foreign to traditional Rabbinic Judaism but had taken root in Languedoc and Catalonia under the influence of newly available philosophical materials. In this ethos, the act of investigating God was accorded great religious significance, and it was its adoption by the first Kabbalists that helped spur them to engage in their investigations of God and, in so doing, develop Kabbalah.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Creativity in the First Kabbalistic Writings -- Chapter 2 The Philosophic Ethos -- Chapter 3 Investigating God in Rabbinic and Later Jewish Literature -- Chapter 4 The Philosophic Ethos in the Writings of the First Kabbalists -- Chapter 5 Investigating God in Sefer ha-Bahir -- Chapter 6 The Philosophic Ethos in the Writings of Naḥmanides -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.